Investor Prestige Rankings

S-Tier: Warren Buffett, Jim Simons, Ben Graham, George Soros

A-Tier: Seth Klarman, Howard Marks, Julian Robertson, Steve Mandel, Cliff Asness, David Swensen, Joel Greenblatt, Bill Gross, Mario Gabelli,  Walter Schloss, Charlie Munger, Paul Tudor Jones, Michael Steinhardt, Stanley Druckenmiller, Ray Dalio, Peter Lynch, Ken Griffin, Steve Cohen, Carl IcahnDE Shaw, Bill Nygren, Sam Zell

B-Tier: Chase Coleman, Phillipe Lafont, Antti Ilmanen, Glenn Greenberg, Bill Ackman, Steve Schwarzman, Jesse Livermore, Michael Burry, Dan Loeb, Alfred W Jones, Mitch Julius, David Abrams, Phil Fisher

C-Tier: Gabe Plotkin, Wes Gray, Tobias Carlisle, DeepFuckingValue, John Paulson

D-Tier: Fred Liu, David Einhorn

F-Tier: Cathie Wood, Bill Hwang, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes (as part of LTCM)

Please make your own if anyone feels like it, for fun comparisons

59 Comments
 

How is Stanley Druckenmiller not S-Tier after 30 years of 30% average annual returns? Also surprising Steve Schwarzman is not A-Tier as he created a $100B+ market cap PE firm that revolutionized the alternative asset industry. The list is missing a lot of people associated with the Bass family wealth, original GS prop trading desk, VC investors, International investors, other people within Buffett’s circle, etc. 

 

Haha so please do make your own.

Stanley isn't S tier for me because I feel like he doesnt rlly have an impact outside of his returns, like the other S tier guys do. 

Steve isn't A tier because (controversial) I feel like privates is just less process-based than publics. Plus he only ran the buyout team for a relatively short while - most of his career was spent as an executive and CEO

Yea, idk too many international investors other than Li Lu who I forgot to include. Not too familiar with VC

 

What determines placement? Returns over a 10, 20, 30 year period? Absolute returns or alpha? Or is it more about whether or not they built a large investment firm that made them billionaires? Or is it about their media skills in becoming a public persona? More about innovation in the field? More about them being a teacher who influenced a lot of investors? 

90% of what we know about these people comes from the same handful of books and interviews we all read. There are a ton more of "legendary" investors who are just not public personas. 

There is also a distinction between those who are great business people (raising assets, creating and selling the right investment product at the right times) and those who are great investors (innovated to develop a somewhat differentiated process to uncover dislocations and generate strong absolute returns). 

Also I agree with the guy who said that anyone who has made $100mn for themselves from investing work is S tier in my book. 

 
Most Helpful

I'm only talking about L/S. 95% of the guys on ur list are just marketing geniuses / asset gatherers / right place right time / rich parents type

The best IRR HOF / alpha generators are ppl you've never heard of. The list SHOULD look like:

  • A group of like 15-20 MM PMs running $3-5bn and consistently putting up 5-7%+ gross (yes they exist) in US / London or some random country (and 0 net). These guys have made billions of lifetime pnl and have personally made hundreds of $m over their career and are the sharpest people you'll meet. These are incredibly incredibly good seats if you can get. Woodruff type but there are others you don’t know about (by design lol)
  • A few tiger cub / big multi strat L/S sr analysts / PMs (pref if you’ve been in seat for a while and and made $ on a thru the cycle basis)
  • Guys running >4bn SMs that consistently make 15-20% and have been in biz for over 10 years (the ones you’ve never heard of)

The greatest SM funds are the ones you've never heard of in like Malibu or Atlanta or Monaco. The amount of PMs quietly minting hundreds of $m / even billions is shocking. Work for the above guys, not d1 or tiger

 

F. But then he's more of a sell side guy and spent most of his career just as a 'pundit', although he managed a book for a short while. It's why I didnt include A-tier people like Maubossin because they're just sell-side folks

 

I rlly wonder why he left PIMCO. And I wonder if PIMCO still retains any of his influence and process. Feels kinda poignant to leave the legacy that you built, whether thru internal politics or whatever

 

No way David Abrams is B-Tier, All time performance solely based on 13Fs is 18.5x since inception, not to mention only half of the AUM is even in public equities, it used to be a well known fact around 2014-15 times that Abrams returned at least 15% annualized for over 15 years, with no use of leverage. Plus the fact that he is low profile and doesn't market himself and let's the numbers speak should easily give him an 'A' imo. 

 

Surprised you missed Christopher Hohn. This guys has generated phenomenal returns over the last decades. Would put him in high A or even S

 

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